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Joseph Sipalan

Artist Mcfeddy Simon has spent the last decade mastering the sundatang, a long-forgotten musical instrument from Sabah state in Malaysian Borneo, where the gentle, ethereal twang of the two-stringed lute is held in the memory of only the oldest villagers.
It was in 2016 in a rural village in Ranau, sitting on the spine of Sabah state’s famed Crocker Range in Malaysian Borneo, where a brief exchange with local youths on what they thought of the instrument sparked his mission.
“I asked why they did not want to play this instrument. They told me it only had six frets, and it was boring, and they might as well play the guitar,” Mcfeddy told This Week in Asia.
The outright dismissal of the instrument by the very people whose culture created it drew a strong reaction from Mcfeddy, better known by the nickname Gindung.

“Their reply left me quite disappointed, but it also lit the spark in me to push to revive this instrument,” he said.
Mcfeddy has been at the forefront of an arts movement in Sabah to revive the sundatang, a boat lute that was commonly used by the state’s Kadazan, Dusun, Murut and Rungus communities and their dozens of sub-ethnic groups.
Measuring between 75 and 90 centimetres long, the instrument is typically carved out from a single block of wood and creates a sound akin to a muted banjo.
It falls within the same family of instruments as its more famous cousin, the sape from neighbouring Sarawak state.
But modernisation pried attention away from the once ubiquitous instrument, as locals opted for more easily available stringed instruments such as guitars and violins over the sundatang, which was typically handcrafted by village artisans.
That shift caused many sundatang makers to give up the craft, with references all but relegated to historical accounts and the few instruments that remain scattered across rural villages, like the one Mcfeddy bought in 2016 from an old man in a village in Ranau.

To build the foundation for his sundatang revival, Mcfeddy decided to spend a year in Sarawak to learn how to make – and play – the sape, the closest instrument of its kind.
His journey also brought him to Kalimantan, to learn about the many different versions of the sape used by the region’s ethnic Dayak communities, and all the way to the UK, where he visited the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and the British Museum to study historical records related to the sundatang collected during the colonial era.
Back home in Ranau, where Mcfeddy had previously joined up with fellow artists to set up the arts collective Pangrok Sulap, he set to work crafting his own interpretation of how the sundatang should represent Sabah’s ethnic culture.
And he firmly believes that the best way to revive the instrument is to show, not tell.
“When I started making the instrument, people were still not drawn to it as they did not hear it [musically],” he said. “So I decided I needed to get into music to introduce the instrument.”
It was in late 2017 when Mcfeddy started Tuni Sundatang, a musical group marrying Sabah traditional music and instruments with modern pop and rock.


This year, Tuni Sundatang were invited to perform at the Rainforest World Music Festival, which is Sarawak’s premier folk festival, and later at the World Music Festival in Taiwan.
Their single, Highlanders, was also picked as one of six songs from the World Music Festival for a music programme produced by Japanese broadcaster NHK.
“We are not yet at the level of a revival [of the sundatang], but we are getting there because people are already starting to recognise the instrument,” Mcfeddy said.
“My ultimate goal is to make the sundatang internationally renowned … I want to launch a sundatang revolution.”


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‘Sundatang revolution’: a Malaysian artist’s quest to revive the lost sound of Sabah

Tuni Sundatang performing on stage at a show in Kuala Lumpur. Photo: Joseph Sipalan

A photo of the first “modern” sundatang made by McFeddy in 2020. Photo: Facebook / McFeddy Simon 

A fan poses for a photo with McFeddy Simon (second from right) and his band, Tuni Sundatang, after a show in Kuala Lumpur. Photo: Joseph Sipalan

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Mcfeddy Simon, better known as Gindung, is on a mission to restore the two-stringed lute’s place in the state’s musical heritage


Mcfeddy Simon, better known as Gindung, is on a mission to restore the two-stringed lute’s place in the state’s musical heritage.


Music